Corporate media continue to ignore or understate Labour’s outstanding policy offering. It dwarfs the scattering of false carrots dangled by Boris Johnson
As Boris Johnson begins the process – to a dire reception – of trying to convince voters he has more to offer than blonde hair, bad jokes and Brexit, the corporate media have been attempting to persuade the country that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has withdrawn into a ‘bunker’.
As part of fostering this impression, they have been resolutely ignoring – or at best drastically understating – the huge policy platform Corbyn and his team have been putting together, as well as Corbyn’s many rallies and other public appearances to present these policies to the public.
As an aid to voters and to Labour activists, the @ToryFibs Labour activist account has put together a list of Labour’s key policies – 124 policies Labour will implement in government to transform the country.
As ever, the policies are fully costed – and the list had to be cut down considerably from the full set for readability:
Boris Johnson clearly hopes to turn the next general election into a personality contest. Labour, meanwhile, is preparing for government.
As Labour supporter James Foster put it today, “Don’t just hope for a better life. Vote for one.”
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Time to stop whining and focus on developing a winning strategy that aims to deliver those promises.
The more policy we announce now the more time the Tories have to challenge our sums and ‘me too’ our policies – and we should save the killers for when they’re announcing their best in the run up to the GE.
Given that they own both the timetable and the media I believe our strategy has to be flexible and reactive enough to respond to theirs rather than being fixed now.
Whose whining, and about WHAT exactly RH? Perhaps you could give some examples.
And regarding the complaint of A/S made against Tom Watson, I have no doubt that it will either be completely ignored by the MSM and Co, or the accuser will be vilified. But given that he’s a proffesor of Jewish history, I have little doubt that they’ll go with the former option………
So I just this second did a search on duck duck go, and there was nothing. And THAT of course is the difference, and a perfect example of the power of the MSM, the point being that if it had been someone on the left of the party who had done the same, the MSM would have been all over it, along with lots of quotes from the usual suspects and organisations condmning the person responsible.
Anyway, whilst doing a search, I DID in fact come across the following from last August, and you can be sure that it wasn’t just the Daily Mail that ran with it:
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson is hit by barrage of vile abuse and calls to quit in coordinated Twitter campaign by Corbynistas after he demands tougher action on anti-Semitism
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6031425/Tom-Watson-hit-Corbynista-campaign-demanding-quit-criticised-party-anti-Semitism.html
Sorry to jam this in here but just had the email about elections to the CAC.
I’m planning to vote for Billy Hayes and Seema Chandwani – opinions against?
An article worth reading. Well done SkwaWkbox.
now to ensure the MP’s we vote into office will actually support this 100% by removing the ones proven to be careerists who are refusing to fully support the party and the leader of the party.
Where’s the abolition of Universal Credit? (And replacement with a better system, or at least retention of Working Tax Credits/HB until something better is evolved, such as UBI)
What happened to the pension commitment for the waspis?woman who were caught up in the pension scam born in the 1950s? Anybody know anything?
Thank you Joseph. As I told my kids, if they can get away with putting 6 years on us 1950s women with only six months notice, they can do it to anyone.
Remember how easily the young turned on the old over the referendum vote?
The Tories won’t think twice about blaming ‘unaffordably generous state pensions’ for the young not being able to afford housing, child care etc. – instead of Tory austerity and an incompetent brexit.
Divide and rule is second nature to the heirs of empire.
David my state pension is six hundred and seventy pounds per month.my wife and me are grateful for this.But generous compared to other countries…..I think not….we exist but….have to be creative to live and leave the country in the winter to live with our children and granchildren in a much warmer climate…..We are lucky to be able to do this,.but 670pounds….by our generous you’ve never had it so good party of mps….Let them sample my pension?….and lead by example….we will not be reduced to begging for extra help,and why should we…So we fight for Socialism and are betrayed by our own party…many who are happy to let us exist for now.The alternative is….Boris Johnson and his tory fanatics or our treacherous mps and lordys ?..my excuse for a blowout…its Monday
The point about the diversionary tactic of ‘baby boomers’ v. ‘millenials’ is well made. As you imply, it’s objective is to normalise falling standards of provision instead of (a) dealing with genuine problems of population and climate change etc. and (b) making even more egregious moves to shift wealth to the wealthy.
Attacks on pensions are one example, rising accommodation prices are another. For us, few years after starting work, it was quite possible to buy a modest house with a modest salary, and this was also the time of plentiful public sector accommodation. Pensions, even then, were far from ‘generous’, but, if state pensions were backed by unremarkable occupational ones, life was manageable. It wasn’t the land of milk and honey, but the remains of the post-war settlement broadly held good in keeping the wolf from the door.
We all know what has happened since, and where resources have gone. The disappearance of public sector housing can be taken as a metaphor for the economic change – and it’s to do with choice, not simply generational differences in circumstances.
The proportional shift of wealth from the wage to the capital sector is the most telling simple piece of data – not quoted often enough when poverty of resources is claimed as the cause.
RH very good summing up….On a smoke and mirrors operation by those we trusted and those we didn’t to dump me and my wife with a pathetic pension whilst loading their own pensions and wages…..Luckily I have not been broken like many others elderly and vulnerable people who have to live off the sweepings off the table from our mps.Austerity its been here under all goverments for donkeys years,and looking to the future,we will wonder why we were so gullible when we see a meltdown coming very soon and episode 2 of banksters and economic meltdown arrives
Just heard on the Today programme that Boris is planning to spend df £100 million on a media campaign in support of No Deal.
We will need to be able to cope with Goebbels on Speed during the next period leading to a general election. We are in a very dangerous time, and the faint hearts have some very hard choices that comes down to a simple question: do they support the party or do they prefer the institution of a period of naked fascism?
None of Jeremy’s opponents can bring the necessary moral strength and authority to the forthcoming conflict that he can.
Joseph, my “unaffordably generous” comment was sarcastic, intended only to suggest one possible way the Tories will foment division between the generations to divert attention from their failed economic policies of austerity for us and low taxes for the rich.
“Failed” in terms of providing the greatest benefit to the greatest number – a thundering success if all you care about is the 1%.
My pension is slightly less than yours btw.
Yes David I did realise,but forgot to mention that!With you and toffee I do manage to be entertained with good humour whilst being informative and educational.Many on here have much more knowledgeable comments and history lessons thanthey perhaps realise.Some comments dredge up valuable memorys buried and redirected by us older posters……the Harvey procter … Watson fiasco comes to mind……. I quoted 30 years ago,but it goes back further……Bob mellish,Simon Hughes,peter tatchel…….I would need to spend weeks looking back and really its for the police to look back to historical child sex abuse and many are long dead,the perpetrators,and many of the victims…..Labour Libs Torys mps lords united in perversion and evil.Yes and careful who we defend and who we condem?
Joseph, on child sex abuse it seems to me it’s always been there.
Age of consent itself is a relatively modern phenomenon and it used to be lower than 16 – I can’t be arsed looking it up but 12 rings a bell. It’s probably been lower than that and in centuries past when people died younger little children will have been abused at will.
We’re programmed to breed and to cherish our young – the fact we’re attracted to young, pretty faces is the reason they’re in demand by TV advertisers, fashion houses etc. – if not for that advertising would be by experts rehearsing salient facts about products.
It shouldn’t surprise us that some people, probably more than we imagine, get their wires crossed – luckily most won’t ever have the opportunities to act on their desires that celebrity brings, hence the thousands caught vicariously watching the far smaller number who make the foul videos of abuse.
None of what I’ve said excuses anything but it’s as well to recognise it for what it is.
‘New Brighton mainline for SW England’
Is that for New Brighton, Merseyside?
Or is it ‘New – Brighton mainline for SW England??
And if so, what’s that about? Why Brighton? And Brighton’s SE England isn’t it?
I’m VERY confused…
Hmmm…
£10p/h for 16 year olds, £1bn for new bus routes AND free bus travel until 25?
That’s also gonna take a lot of explaining.
Well – we all remember, when the crocodile tears are shed re. climate change and the virus of car usage what happened to cheap public transport under Thatcher – and her comments about it. There was a time when South Yorkshire was *reducing* journeys by car.
.. and they’re still making essentially adulatory documentaries about that woman! You know – the one who is lauded for spending billions on rescuing the Falklands when a bit of cheap and simple foresight and intelligent policy would have done the job.
Never look a gift horse …. but this one has massive penalties attached to the bribes.
2% of GDP on military spending
Trident replacement
These 2 policies are complete and utter crap and should be dropped!
Tony, maybe they’re there because some issues are so dog-whistle to the Tories that not including them in a Labour manifesto would bring a constant torrent of abuse down on us. Tories often announce stuff only to kick it into the long grass for a year and then announce it again.
I have a relative who, to end her 14-year-old’s pestering to go on holiday with her mates to Ibiza, promised her she could go when she was 16.
Whining over, 2 years’ respite.
She had no intention of letting a 16-year-old go either.
Trident is neither a deterrent nor independent
Michael Portillo, Tory defence minister
Well said, Doug!
As David Cameron has admitted, nuclear deterrence is only a theory.
“All our political lives we have been nurtured on the theory of nuclear deterrence.”
—-David Cameron
“Call Me Dave” by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, p169.
If it fails, then billions of people will die. Labour can certainly win on this issue if it has a clear and consistent message.
No 1 Police
how do you know Boris is lying, because his lips are moving
as mayor he promised an extra 1,000 police, at the end there 1,000 less police and a record number of police stations closed
there will be 20,000 police leaving the service in next 3 years, to keep his promise he would have to recruit 40,000
this is logistically impossible
unless its part of trade deal with Trumpton, we sell them NHS and they allow our police officers to hot desk in McDonalds
The following is a link to the latest newsletter from GMWatch (at least I HOPE it is), with several articles which I’m sure will be of interest:
https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/daily-digest-xjjd7ytksx?e=7613ce0920
And here’s an article about a possible solution to Climate Change, which a couple of people have mentioned in their posts:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cheapest-way-save-planet-grows-like-weed/5684658
Interesting point, but the one issue that promoters of mass tree planting or hemp planting miss is this – the planting of mono-cultures. If you have nothing but acres of hemp, or acres of one tree type, then it’s just as bad for bio-diversity as say acres of wheat or acres of manicured suburban lawns.
Diversity is the key – we should be planting eco-systems, not just, say, trees, or just, say, hemp. By all means, lets plant lots of trees, but add in bushes, fruit trees, wild flowers, fruit bushes, and our food crops. Hemp amongst the hawthorns 🙂
Proof of this is what’s happened in Ireland with tree planting – it’s been contracted out to private companies, so what did they do? Plant acres of sitka spruce as a cash crop. The result is ecological dead zones, they may as well left the land sheep-wrecked:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/trees-ireland-biodiversity-sitka-birds-extinction
No, we should be revitalising our Earth, and our earth, with a cross between rewilding, permaculture and forest gardening. Not just plant trees, but plant eco-systems!
That way we encourage a complete system of birds, insects and mammals, that will provide the pest control we’ll need, and provide habitat for our fellow earthlings. It won’t be a system that lends itself to mechanisation, but there will be one thing we won’t be short of, and that is human labour.
There are of course tens of thousands of different types of trees around the world, and I don’t think anyone was thinking in terms of planting trees for commercial reasons, whereas THAT was the case regarding hemp. And given all it’s numerous uses, it sounds like it would be a great cash-crop for small farmers in developing countries, or wherever. And I don’t think for one moment that anyone was thinking it terms of planting just hemp, and I’m sure they are into diversity and working with nature. It would be rather odd if they WEREN’T. As it says in the article:
A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that loss of biodiversity impacts ecosystems as much as climate change and pollution. Forests shelter plant and animal life in their diverse forms, and trees remove air pollution by the interception of particulate matter on plant surfaces and the absorption of gaseous pollutants through the leaves.
I have no doubt that they are definitely on OUR side Mark! And I don’t think they’re missing anything.
Allan, agreed, my biggest fear is that the good ideas presented become captured by corporate elites as another way of making money for rich people, as is happening in the Ireland example.
At a more local level, I helped plant 500 trees last year around a community centre. As part of the development of the tarmac play area, a private contractor had agreed to build a skate/BMX park this year after they were allowed to use some land as a builders yard – due to lack of joined up thinking some of those new trees have been bulldozed in the process!
It makes me think that a lot of what we need to do requires nationalisation of assets and resources, simply to make them work better together in a holistic way.
‘… my biggest fear is that the good ideas presented become captured by corporate elites as another way of making money for rich people…’
Yes, that’s always the problem Mark, and if hemp takes off, then Big Ag will of course cash in, and THAT’s where the monoculture will come in. But replacing petrochemical-based plastics is essential, and can’t happen soon enough.
And then there’s cotton……
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/care-what-you-wear-facts-cotton-clothing-production
My worst fear is that the ‘Monsantos’ of the world want to replace the whole of the natural world with a GM world, destroying biodiversity and ecosystems and habitats in the process, as they ARE of course.
I thought policies were great, in fact was quite moved. Yes a couple to perhaps neuter the Tories perception of a potential weakest link which is very clever. We should also now and then get out of our social media echo chamber (though we need a space to discuss ideas) but for example I go on BBC News website and we should all go on the attack on other sites promoting Labour. I had fun on BBC site attacking Tory Neo-Liberals and good line: THE TORY NEO-LIBERALS ARE ‘THE MAD MONKS AND MONKESSES OF MONETERISM’ Time to get out there comrades and use your creativity especially as Tories spending millions on social media adverts – get out there and attack the Right Wing Tory Neo-Liberal Barbarians!
Recognise Palestine, ignore Scottish calls for Independence! Replace Trident, site them in Scotland! Is it any wonder the people of Scotland reject Labour and the lip service they give us? Labour is right for England and I wish them their OWN Independence, leave us to ours.